Hungry-Man turkey dinner?
My advice is to buy the biggest turkey you can get, even if you’re just eating it yourself. The bigger turkeys have a higher meat:bone ratio.
As for dealing with the extras:
- Cut up half the turkey for Thanksgiving day and as much leftovers as you want.
- Cut off the second breast portion and keep whole for sandwiches. You might want to cut it into three pieces and freeze if you don’t have sandwiches that often.
- Cut the dark meat off the bones and sort of cube it up. Do the same with anything left over from #1
- With the bones mostly free of meat, make turkey broth. (Put in a pot on low overnight with enough water to cover the bones, a little celery, carrot, onion and pepper. Strain out everything solid in the morning).
- Use the turkey broth and some of the cubed meat to make a pot pie (or two or three). Freeze them for as long as you like in disposable tins.
- Use the rest of the turkey broth and remainder of the cubed meat and freeze for soup in Ziploc bags. When you want soup, just add some potatoes, carrots, celery or whatever you’d normally put in chicken soup.
The result for my wife and I is about three full Thanksgiving meals, a week’s worth of sandwiches, three pot pies and two soups. Nothing goes to waste. And, since we buy the 22-24 lb turkeys at the $0.25/lb promotional holiday prices, we’ve got essentially a dozen meals out of $6 of meat. We actually buy about four turkeys every year at that price, and spread them out through the year.
I’ve been eating in-the-bird stuffing all my life, and I haven’t gotten sick yet. So I (and everyone else) must be doing it right. 
'Round heah, a man just ain’t a MAN 'nless he kin stuff a turkey!
I had no problem finding a 10 lb. bird last year at Costco. (My friends were all joking that sure, it’s only 10 lbs., but you have to buy 6 of them.)
Since this is a food related thread, I’m going to throw it over to CS.
Beyond the fact that stuffing that doesn’t hit a certain temp could be unsafe, it just ends up adding mass to the bird and forces longer cooking time, which in turn ups the likelihood of a dry bird. I always make my dressing separate… And now I’m starving and it’s still a few weeks away from Thanksgiving. 
Bake a couple turkey thighs on top of a small batch of stuffing. Or if you want drippings for gravy, bake the thighs in foil separate from the stuffing.
Don’t forget to do a green bean casserole too - yummmm.
I use a cooking bag, which reduces the cooking time; and I’ve never had a dry bird. 
Now there’s an idea! Maybe make two batches, so that I have dripping-filled stuffing as well as drippings for gravy.
What would happen if you purchased a 10# to 12# bird and had the butcher cut the damn thing in half lengthwise? You would still be able to “stuff” the breast cavity and have half the white meat and half the dark meat. Wouldn’t that work?
I ended up getting a ten-pound Jenny-O turkey from the store, a little bit ago. I’ll be sick of it after a while, but I’ll get my white meat and dark meat and cooked-in-the-bird stuffing, and the carcass for stock.
I definitely agree with getting a whole turkey instead of a breast; the soup is the best part.
Why get a butcher to do it? Decent knife and kitchen shears you can do it yourself =)
Actually, why not go ahead and quarter it, put the stuffing in a tray and lay the turkey on top of it. Stuffing gets the drippings, and the skin still gets crispy, and you can cook one, two, three or all four quarters that way =).
10 pound birds are usually fairly easy to find in the market. Last year when I was ordering groceries for Thanksgiving I put a note in my order saying I didn’t care what brand or the price per pound, I just wanted the smallest bird they could find. They delivered an 8 pound turkey. I had no idea such a thing existed, and I doubt I’ll ever see one again. Sigh.
I bought a ten pound turkey (37 cents a pound!) and cooked it on Friday just for leftovers for using for sandwiches and enchiladas, soup, and freezing some. We didn’t even eat it the same night- we went for Thai. Then I went back and bought a 13 pound turkey for later this winter.
Winter! It will probably be Summer before I make the soup! This really is the cooking season. In a few days I’ll make the turkey. In a month’s time it will be prime rib and Yorkshire pudding. A week after that, ham hocks & black-eyed peas and ham hocks & collard greens and cornbread.
I really should get a cat or something to help me eat this stuff!
Thanks ever so much for reminding me of the nastiest day in American cuisine - New Years. I try to let it surprise me with the stench of collard greens, but you’ve alerted me to its sneaking up.
Stench? Never!
And tasty, too!
Dillons (Kroger) had turkeys on sale for a few days last week at $0.39 per lb that were as small as 10 pounds; limit 2. I bought several of the small ones, because they can be safely slow cooked in a smoker.
What do collard greens have to do with New Year’s? Everyone knows that New Year’s dinner is pork and sauerkraut.
Collard greens are equivalent to sauerkraut.